G4 iMac Update

The G4 iMac in the bedroom that I used as a jukebox (connected to a cheap CD micro system I got in a charity shop) stopped working mid May :-(

Unfortunately, it was the screen that was broken - probably the inverter. I had flashed the firmware ages ago to extend the desktop to my flat-screen TV which was a big mistake as I hadn't told it to mirror when I'd last used it to watch a movie on the TV. This meant I could boot the iMac with it connected to the TV and see the background on the TV but see nothing so I couldn't reset it to mirroring to use the TV as a display all the time :-(

I tried the old Core Duo macMini from the spare bedroom that I only use for ripping VHS tapes to digital. It played music on iTunes fine with its internal speaker but kept cutting out when connected to the micro system :-(

So, for about 6 weeks or so I had to share my iPod Classic between work and music in the bedroom :-( A couple of weeks ago, my brother gave me back my old 4GB ipod Mini that I won in a Walkers Crisps promotion about 12 years ago :-) So, it became the bedroom music player but still not as good as the G4 iMac...

I had another broken G4 iMac that I'd stripped the guts out of last year and tried a mod to turn it into a monitor that I lost confidence in as it didn't seem to work at the testing phase of a how to I was trying. I thought the inverter was broken so I had ruled out swapping that screen with the bedroom's one. Decided this week that it was worth a try and did the swap this evening and... it worked :-)  Result!!!

I had to open up the bottom as it wasn't seeing the SATA drive to boot-up -- it's been moved around quite a bit and the adapter board for ATA100 to SAT must have worked loose. Opened it up (there's 14 screws you have to undo to get inside and take the drive-bay out) and checked all the connections then the task of tucking all the extra cables back in to reassemble it without nipping any in the case. Everything is working again :-) took me over an hour as I took it down to the spare bedroom for more space to work. Then I had to move the macMini out of the way and dust the top of the chest it sits on. Yet to test it playing iTunes through the micro system as I'm still enjoying listening to Liza Tarbuck on Radio 2 :-)

Well Liza is finished now so time to test iTunes through the stereo...

Yay! Everything back to normal - Paul Heaton's Acid Country is sounding great :-)

Mac Update

My 1st generation iPad was basically rubbish - I'd had it in a wall-mounted, handmade, pine frame in the kitchen for recipes for 2 years but its browser was regularly crashing :-( I sold it on eBay for about £80 just before Xmas :-) I spent the money on a G4 iBook :-) (more about it below).

My main (most powerful) iMac has a 2TB hard drive in it and a WD MyBook for Mac 4TB external drive used as its Timemachine :-)

Media Server is now a WD MyCloud 6TB drive. Both my flat screen TVs connect to it via WD TV Live boxes. When I go on holiday I take one of them with me and 2 WD My Passport 2TB drives which hold most of my TV show Boxed Sets and Movies. The WD TV Live model I have has both analogue and HDMI outputs so I can connect to the hotel room's TV and plug either WD My Passport drive into one of the USB ports of the WD TV Live to watch my media. I also take an old Samsung Chromebook with me to backup photos I take with my phone to one of the WD My Passport drives.

In my bedroom I have an old G4 1.25GHz iMac with 1.25GB RAM (recently replaced the 512MB SODIMM with a 1GB SODIMM) and a 500GB SATA drive which has a small SATA to ATA100 adapter board to talk to the iMac's ATA100 interface.

Currently typing this on my G4 1GHz iBook with 1.25GB RAM (recently replaced the 512MB SODIMM with a 1GB SODIMM) and an 80GB hard drive (recently replaced the 60GB hard drive) .

I've been using the iBook to learn Java with a book called "Head First Java". Wanted to learn Java so I could use iText to do a project for work where a large quantity of pdf documents from the 1940s have to be electronically stamped with a message and a hand written signature. Unfortunately, the book "iText in Action" I bought is the old edition and the current version of the iText library available online isn't compatible. Now that I have learned Java, I'm close to being able to get things working :-)

When I do get things working, I will be able to reveal more about the documents as they will be able to be published online -- they're currently Classified :-(

Watch this space lol